Early retirement
What if we ditched a far-off hereafter
and instead let whatever heaven is—
and the promises our portfolio holds—
babble and overrun us to overwhelming?
As if this dried-mud road couldn’t not
drive us, wash us up on this grassy plot
some relative bought and then forgot.
We’d be forced that way to make
slow peace with bluestem and millet,
the switchgrass and grama; to test
by rote whoever said a cosmos vibrates
the feet of Kansas. The rest is fieldwork.
We’d be okay, I bet, as if that’s the point;
we’ll keep the pups, but still be stuck
with our failed attempts at preconceived
revisions, creatures no genetics alone
could become or stumble into.
The earth will yield us new instructors.
Locusts won’t stop whirring beside
the crickets and whippoorwill, nor bats
swinging down from hidden roosts
to eat the moths who tell themselves
(or believe at least) our single homely light
strung-wired to the engine is the moon.
Those wings scattered in pairs beneath
it fall because the bats just eat the middles.
Our children will be their students.
In October when the hunters come
who’ve used this place as cabin
and blind for years, they’ll find hot
brown drinks aplenty; a knowing nod
at the composting john; a woman’s
welcome to beat the stand. The dogs
will play with their business-minded
hounds while I distract them with stories
brought from the burbs, true tales
packed with stalking and the kill,
mythical beasts and heroic o’erleaping
while you help the deer escape, down
cellar or out the back. Before too long,
those bright tails flashing danger
won’t need to mean more than they say.
Wouldn’t it be sweet, if amidst browning
grasses and within our little plot—
even as our stocks compounded nicely—
if we’d revert—as nature sort of hints
at holding for those who’d seize
what isn’t offered—to saints of sort,
fading into gold that fades to white.